Suspected jihadists attack on three continents

From the English Channel to the Persian Gulf, security forces were on maximum alert Friday after suspected Islamic terrorists appeared to mount simultaneous attacks on three continents, murdering more than 80 people in Tunisia, France and Kuwait.

Injured people are treated on a Tunisian beach in Sousse on Friday. A young man unfurled an umbrella and pulled out a Kalashnikov rifle, opening fire on European sunbathers in one of three deadly attacks from Europe to the Middle East that killed more than 80 people. Jawhara Fm, The Associated Press / National Post, With files from The Telegraph and The Associated Press

From the English Channel to the Persian Gulf, security forces were on maximum alert Friday after suspected Islamic terrorists appeared to mount simultaneous attacks on three continents, murdering more than 80 people in Tunisia, France and Kuwait.

A decapitated head was found mounted on the fence outside a chemical factory near Lyon, France, alongside a black flag carrying Arabic inscriptions.

In Kuwait City, a suicide bomb exploded in a mosque packed with Shiite worshippers, killing at least 27.

But the deadliest attack came in Tunisia, where a gunman dressed as a tourist pulled a Kalashnikov rifle from an umbrella and opened fire on beachgoers at the Imperial Marhaba Hotel in Sousse.

“We were in the pool when we heard automatic gunfire. People ran past saying there was an armed man on the beach,” read a Twitter post by John Yeoman, a British guest at the hotel who spent the attack barricaded in his room.

The hotel caters largely to foreign tourists. Among the dead were people from Ireland, Belgium, Germany and the U.K. “He was choosing who to shoot,” one witness told Tunisian radio. “Some people, he was saying to them, ‘You go away.’ He was choosing tourists, British, French.”

Wives were killed in front of husbands, sunbathers were cut down as they sprinted to safety, and a 16-year-old British boy reportedly saw his parents and a grandparent murdered in front of him. At least 39 people were reported dead.

Matthew James, a vacationer from Wales, suffered multiple bullet wounds after using himself as a human shield to protect his fiancée.

“He was covered in blood from the shots but he just told me to run away,” she told the British press.

On social media, Britons begged for information about missing relatives.

“Haven’t spoke to my Dad since the attack, please, please, please retweet as he is missing along with his partner,” read one widely circulated message from a man in the East Midlands.

“This is worse than terrible,” said Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi. Tunisia cannot stand up to the Islamist threat alone, he said, but “we are determined to take the most painful measures to deal with an even more painful scourge.”

Although the three attacks have not been definitively linked, they appear to fulfil a promise by propagandists from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant that the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan would bring a “calamity” to the world’s non-Muslims.

Although the victims in Kuwait City were Muslim, the jihadists consider them heretics because they are Shiites. In a statement, ISIL said the bomb had targeted a “temple of the apostates.”

Worshippers at the Imam Sadiq Mosque were standing shoulder to shoulder in group prayer when they were interrupted by a man repeatedly screaming “Allahu akbar” (God is great). A powerful explosion then ripped through the rear of the building.

“We couldn’t see anything, so we went straight to the wounded and tried to carry them out. We left the dead,” said Hassan al-Haddad, 21, who was among the first rescuers to arrive.

The mosque bombing was the third attack in five weeks to be claimed by a purported ISIL affiliate, the Najd Province.

Kuwaiti Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber al-Mubarak al-Sabah declared the attack had been aimed at the country’s “national unity,” but the Arab nation of 3.4 million is “much stronger” than anything terrorists could deliver.

“This is a wake-up call to fight harder,”he said.

This month, the U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War forecast Ramadan was “likely to be violent” as ISIL held to a jihadist tradition of increasing attacks during the holy month.

“The first message to take from these attacks is that (ISIL) is steadily and successfully spreading beyond its territorial heartland in Syria and Iraq,” read a Friday assessment by Shashank Joshi, a Middle East expert with the Royal United Services Institute in London. Friday’s attacks were notable in that they targeted Kuwait and Tunisia, two countries often seen as bastions of calm in the middle of war-torn regions.

Kuwait has consistently ranked as one of the world’s most peaceful Arab countries, in sharp contrast to its next-door neighbour, Iraq.

Tunisia, similarly, is one of the most secular countries in North Africa, and its switch to democracy in 2011 has been one of the few success stories of the Arab Spring.

“I believe that it is not accidental that Tunisia is among the countries attacked by terrorists,” Donald Tusk, head of the European Commission, said in Brussels.

However, the country also has no shortage of armed jihadists carrying its passports. According to an estimate this month, Tunisia has contributed more recruits to ISIL than any other country outside Iraq and Syria.

Friday’s massacre was the worst terrorist attack in Tunisia’s history, although it comes only months after a similar assault on the Bardo National Museum in Tunis, where two gunmen killed 22 mostly-foreign visitors.

Both attacks, notably, targeted the country’s critical tourist sector. Tunisia is only a two-hour flight from most major European cities, and relies on tourism for 400,000 jobs and seven per cent of its gross domestic product.

By Friday afternoon, German tour operators were allowing customers to cancel Tunisian bookings. In spite of the violence, however, planeloads of European vacationers continued to touch down at Tunisian airports.

In Dublin, the Irish travel agent Sunway offered 170 Tunisia-bound vacationers who were at the airport the chance to cancel. Only 59 took up the offer, according to Irish public radio.

The perpetrator in the French attack is believed to be Yassin Salhi, a 35-yearold delivery man, who was investigated for religious extremism in 2006, but who has evaded the notice of authorities since 2008.

“We have a normal family life. He goes to work and comes home. He doesn’t pick up the phone when I call, it goes to the answer machine,” Salhi’s wife told Europe 1 radio. She was arrested soon after the interview.

The victim, whose severed head was found outside a factory owned by Air Products, has been identified as Salhi’s boss at a local delivery firm.

The gas factory was a customer of the delivery company, which is how investigators suspect Salhi was able to gain entry.

He is also believed to have started a series of small fires at the facility by setting off explosions using gas canisters. He was arrested by a firefighter and remains in custody.

“This was a terrorist attack, given that a corpse was found decapitated and with inscriptions,” said French President François Hollande.

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